Apparently academics at business schools now spend a lot of their time doing research for academic journals that is of little practical relevance and that nobody even reads. “Academics do it,” Mr. Zicklin told Ian Wylie in the Financial Times, “because they are interested in doing it, but it’s also the mechanism by which they get promoted and secure tenure. Because research is an important part of business school rankings, it has created the value system by which academics are rewarded. Research adds so much to the cost of education, especially at business school. But the evidence about research also suggests that most people can’t understand it.”

Mr. Zicklin argues that his proposal could yield huge gains in the productivity of business schools. He points to research which suggests that “fees could be halved if 80 per cent of faculty with the lowest teaching loads were to teach only half as much as the 20 per cent with the highest teaching loads. He predicts that the rise of massive open online courses, or Moocs, and other market forces will conspire against schools that fail to act."

Mr. Zicklin isn’t proposing to do away with research. “Research,” he says, "has to be kept in its place. It can’t be the criteria for hiring or promotion. Teaching ability should be the primary factor. Students are entitled to the best teachers that schools can secure, but not the best researchers. They don’t need the person who invents theoretical models to teach them those models.”

Academic colleagues are “upset”

Are Mr. Zicklin’s business school colleagues pleased with his proposal for this massive gain in productivity? On the contrary. The Financial Times reports that his colleagues are “upset.”

Why?

One possibility is that Mr. Zicklin’s proposal would disturb the comfortably insulated world of business school faculties of academics writing for other academics. However that world is ending anyway. “Business schools aren’t aware of the tsunami that’s about to hit them,” says Mr. Zicklin. “The era of charging $200,000 for an education is over. Research is such an expensive part of business school education that institutions are going to have to cut back on research.”

Another possibility is that suggested by “MMG” in response to an earlier article in this column on business schools: "I am a visiting professor in some b-schools. I am not an academic. I am a practicing manager and consultant with more 40 years’ experience. What surprised me was most of the b-school academics had no general management knowledge or experience or skills. They know their areas well but that is not enough to run a business."

Thus some of Mr. Zicklin’s colleagues may be upset because they lack the experience in management and business to teach business. As another business school professor with long experience in management said about the faculty, “Their book work is fine, but they don’t understand what it means.”

George Bernard Shaw once quipped: “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” What the business school professors may be offering is a new corollary: “Those who can’t teach, do research.”